


i will try to forgive myself, for living in the dark, for my loss of wonder, for forgetting how to play (i will try to see myself as i am)

by supernxva23



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: AU, Molina Family Superiority, Sunset Curve (Julie and The Phantoms), and is very sorry, author projects onto julie, author's life experiences, in which julie just needs time, julie honey im so sorry, so this is sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28106346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernxva23/pseuds/supernxva23
Summary: 'She doesn’t know how long she sits there and then Carlos is in front of her, taking her hands and doing his best to bring her up back onto her feet.'--Julie just needs some more time.
Relationships: Carlos Molina & Julie Molina, Flynn & Julie Molina, Julie Molina & Julie Molina's Mother, Julie Molina & Ray Molina
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	1. the beginning

**Author's Note:**

> hey, i'm sad.  
> title is Prayer from Ghost Quartet

She hates hospitals. Too bright and somehow, too quiet and too loud at the same time. How is that possible? The horror of hearing a flat line as you walk back from the vending machine. And it’s cold. She’ll bring a sweater next time. Small pity smiles from nurses that walk by.

But she’d pay them no mind. In her head, everything was going to be fine. If she believed that everything was okay, then she could make it true. ‘It _will_ all be okay.’, she thinks. 

Julie could never set foot in a hospital again and she’d be fine with that. They always felt off, even when she was young and had to visit her baby brother while he was stuck in an incubator because he was born too early. She always felt uncomfortable in hospitals. 

But hospitals are for sick people to get better right? So her mom would be okay. The doctors would fix her, make her better. Right? Chemo treatments turned from every three weeks to more frequent until her mother was admitted into the hospital.

Julie would spend as much time as she could as her mother’s bedside. Bringing along her bracelet making set to have something to focus on besides her mother’s sickly pale form propped up in her bed. 

Each bracelet she finished and presented brought a smile to her mom’s face. And as time went on, her mom’s smiles looked more and more dull. She looked sicker and sicker every day, but Julie still held onto hope. 

Then one night, her dad came to pick her and Carlos up from their aunt’s house. Her dad walked in the door and Julie had never seen his face look like it did. He took one look at her aunt, who started to cry, then made his way over to Julie. 

“Is she coming home yet?” Julie asks him. Her dad’s reddened eyes look over his daughter and his son sleeping next to her, “No, mom’s not coming home sweetheart.” “So they’re making her stay at the hospital still?” Julie questions. Her dad ducks his head for a moment before looking back at her.

He takes a breath and says, “ No, honey, mom isn’t stating at the hospital. Julie, mom’s gone.” Julie huffs out a laugh, “No, she’s not,” Her dad’s eyes begin to water as he breathes in deep. “Julie…” he starts. Her face falls as she shakes her head. “No. No! She can’t be gone, she’s not!” she tells him.

Ray sets his hands on her shoulders as she goes on. “Dad, she’s not gone. She has to be here.” Julie’s eyes start watering now as her dad pulls her into a hug. “She-she can’t. Please tell me she isn’t… She-I did… I didn’t get… to say goodbye- I didn’t… there ‘s more time, she has to have more time. We have time! Please, there’s ti-” A sob stops her as she falls apart in her dad’s arms. 

Ray shushes her, “Shh, sweetheart, I know.” He holds his daughter until she runs out of tears and falls asleep, exhausted from her tears. Carlos had slept through Julie’s cries and Ray was already prepping himself to tell his son that their mother wasn’t coming home. He maneuvers Julie back to lie on the sofa and sets a blanket over her and Carlos. Tomorrow will come, and he will do it again.

The sun rises on the next day and while Julie still sleeps, Ray pulls Carlos aside and tells him the news. Carlos cries in his arms and after the tears subside, he says, sniffling, “Pancakes,” then jumps down and walks into the kitchen. Ray watches him go, stunned for a moment, the rises and follows his son.

The two set out to make pancakes. Victoria comes down and steps into the kitchen. She stops to look at the two of them with a soft gaze before making her way to the coffee machine. Victoria sips on her cup of coffee as she watches them finish up. She helps Ray set the table and Carlos volunteers to wake his sister.

He walks into the living room, his sister wrapped in a blanket still sleeping. Gently, he shakes her and she opens her eyes landing on her brother. “C’mon, breakfast.” he says. She lets Carlos take her hand and lead her to the kitchen without letting her run into a wall or doorway. 

When she enters, she’s greeted by smiles on her aunt and dad’s faces that don’t reach their eyes. Sad smiles. And with that, Julie is fully awake. She forgot for a minute. How could she forget? Julie has to take a deep breath before she breaks. 

Breakfast goes on in silence, the pancakes that normally would taste amazing somehow taste like nothing today. After breakfast, the three Molinas leave Victoria’s house for their own home. 

Days go on, and suddenly a week has gone by. A knock on Julie’s bedroom door one night becomes common, Carlos coming in with a tear-stained face and climbs in next to his sister as she wraps him up tightly into a blanket. Both siblings sniffling late into the night. 

Julie wakes one morning and thinks, ‘The plants. We haven’t watered the plants.’. She rushes down the stairs and out of the house to the studio. With the watering can in hand, she makes it to the doors and grabs the handle. She freezes. ‘Open the door, Julie.’ she tells herself. But she can’t.

She can’t open the door. And so, her hands start to shake, and her legs give out. The watering can spills as it falls from her hand. Julie hits the ground and cries. She doesn’t know how long she sits there and then Carlos is in front of her, taking her hands and doing his best to bring her up back onto her feet.

Once she’s up, he reaches down and picks up the watering can, going over to the garden hose and fills it back up. Julie stays rooted in place as Carlos opens the doors enough to squeeze in. He comes out a minute later, the can nearly empty and sets it aside. He takes his sister’s hand and leads her back to the house.

Once he’s gotten her inside, she makes her way up to her room and crawls into bed. And so, time goes on. Days vary between good and bad. Julie still can’t bring herself to go into the studio. She tries, but she still can’t open the doors. But every time she can’t, she always thinks, ‘One day.’

Time, things take time. Months go by, and the good days starts to outweigh the bad ones. Julie sometimes finds herself with a lyric stuck in her head and starts walking to where her mom would be before remembering that she can’t. Her mom isn’t here anymore. But she’s not alone. She’s never truly alone.

Time passes and suddenly she's being told by Mrs. Harrison that she has to perform to stay in the music program. The week of the performances had Julie’s chest feeling tight. She feels like she can’t take a full breath. She spends the week stressing so much that she forgets about it until the day of when Flynn asks her about it. 

Julie laughs it off, but on the inside she’s freaking out. Nerves build up and then she’s being called up to perform in front of the class. She sits at the piano, set her hands on the keys, and hopes. And nothing happens. Just like when she tries to go into the studio. She gets so far, but can’t go the distance. 

Julie tries, but she stands up and apologizes to Mrs. Harrison, bolting out of the room. She makes it to the stairs and barely hears the following footsteps that sound behind her. Her fleeing is stopped by Flynn’s voice. But she can’t do this again. Julie can’t listen to her friend try to kick her back into gear.

So she finally snaps. She tells Flynn how she’s tried for everyone, but she still can’t do it. She wants her to understand so badly how she feels. She tries, then she runs. 

When she gets home, her dad sits her down and she prepares for the disappointment. But by some miracle, he doesn’t know about what happened today. He sat her down to ask the question she’s been dreading. He asks her if she’d be up the cleaning out the studio. And it’s her _dad_ asking _._

He’s been working so hard ever since her mom died. He has a lot on his shoulders. So maybe, just maybe, she can do this. For him, if nothing else. After her dad leaves for Carlos’ baseball game, Julie makes her way out to the studio. She takes a minute to gather herself, and shakes out her nerves.

She grabs the door handle, breathes in, and opens the door.


	2. and i'm haunted by those memories of who i used to be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise readers, i bet you thought you'd seen the last of this fic.  
> enjoy.  
> not beta'd

Julie takes a step into the studio. She shivers as she takes it all in and doesn’t know why she expected it to look different. It still looks the same, minus the sheeting covering the piano. Her heart aches, but she pushes through. 

Taking her gaze away from the piano, she thinks maybe that’s not something she can handle right now. Julie looks around and tries to decide where to start. Her attention focuses to the left. The loft seems like a good place to start. Climbing up the creaky ladder, she finds the space full of things.

A deconstructed drum set, a few guitars, and some garbage bags full of clothes she’s never seen before. She tosses them over the edge to the ground floor. Julie then goes about taking the instruments down one by one, being as gentle as she can and treating them with care.

She can’t remember her mother ever playing any of them and wanders where they came from. After the instruments are taken care of, Julie can sit and rifle through the smaller things left up there. There’s a crate of junk, paints and scraps of paper, and a folded up canvas. She sets the canvas aside as she goes through the paints and puts other miscellaneous things lying on the floor into the crate.

There’s a CD case, some guitar picks and a well-used leather-bound notebook. Julie sets the canvas on the top of the crate and carefully brings it down the ladder. Once on the ground, she sets the crate aside and takes the canvas to lay it out. As she unfolds it, she can see that it’s already painted on.

Once it’s spread out, she can see what’s on it. Two words are on it, ‘Sunset Curve’, in a big and colorful art style. Julie doesn’t think the name is familiar until something clicks in her brain and she knows she’s seen that name before, like, very recently. Going back to the crate she digs out the CD case.

’Sunset Curve’ resides on the cover of the case so, it’s a band? ‘Cool.’, Julie thinks. She still doesn’t recognize the name beyond the two items that hold the name, she feels like they should, but nothing else comes to mind. Maybe it’s a sign that her studio cleaning could use a soundtrack as she walks over to the stereo with the CD in hand. The disc already in there ejects and Julie sets ‘Sunset Curve’ in just as the studio door opens. 

Julie jumps only to find her brother standing there. Carlos gives the space a once-over before telling his sister that it’s time dinner. He leaves her with a smile and Julie sets down the case on the top of the stereo and shuts off the light before she leaves. A shiver runs through her before she walks into the house. Her hands start to shake. 

When she enters kitchen and sees her dad setting the table, she decides that she has to tell him sooner or later. She thinks sooner is better, because later would definitely be the worse option. So when she drops into her seat at the table, she blurts it out.

“I got kicked out of the music program.” she exclaims. The sound of silverware dropping onto a plate was followed by utter silence. After a few seconds, she raised her head to face her dad who had a look a his face, disbelief, shock, disappointment? She wasn’t sure and just as she was about to put her head back down, her dad spoke.

“Julie, honey, why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” he asks. Julie sighs, “I’m sorry, dad. It was a rough day and I tried, I really did but I just couldn’t play. I meant to tell you before, but I froze.” she admits. Ray lets out a breath and puts a hand over his daughter’s. “Sweetheart, it’s okay to not be ready. We’ll figure it all out, okay? I mean, if , uh, do you still like music?” he questions. Julie shifts around, “No. Maybe? I don’t know.” she finally settles on, because it’s the truth. She doesn’t know.

Her dad squeezes her hand before speaking again. “Well, whether you find out if you want music in your life again or not, we’ll all support you either way, you got that?” he tells her, smiling softly. A second voice pops up, “We’re family, we’ll always be here for you, sis.” Carlos says with a grin on his face.

Relief flows through her and she can’t fight the urge to smile at them and thanks the universe for such an amazing family. They finish up with dinner while Carlos gives Julie a rundown of how his baseball game went, followed by a check-in from Aunt Victoria, who had already gotten word of how Julie’s day went. Their aunt leaves almost as quick as she got there and Julie tells her dad that she’s going back into the studio for a little while longer.

He lets her go with a hug and a heavy reassurance on the fact that she can take all the time she needs to work things out. So Julie finds herself back in the studio as the night gets darker. Taking in the room once again, she makes her way over the the piano. Her mind wanders as she sits on the bench and takes a deep breath. 

Pulling the sleeves of her sweater over her hands, she wipes a bit of dust off the key cover and rests her covered hands in her lap. Another shiver hits her while the start of tears begin to fill her eyes. Julie tries to will the tears away when she raises the cover to reveal the piano keys. The keys are cold as she makes contact with them, shuddering at the feeling she used to know so well.

Eyes raise up as if she’d suddenly see her mom standing there like she would’ve been. “I’m so sorry. mom.”, she cries out, saying it like her mom could hear her. But there’s no one there to listen. Eventually, it gets late and Julie wipes tears from her face and leaves the studio once again, hoping tomorrow will be a better day.

The studio doors are shut, and the CD in the stereo is left un-played. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy 2021, i'm finally updating this fic.  
> lmk what you think of it so far  
> chapter title: tango dancer from ghost quartet  
> as always, 
> 
> rose/nova <3


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